The Stoic Library

Surviving literary works

Although Stoicism was founded in ancient Greece, very little of the literary works from the early Greek Stoics has survived history. The only complete works by Stoic philosophers that stood the test of time came from Roman Stoics, who existed around three centuries after the founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium. 

These Roman Stoics focused primarily on the ethics part of the philosophy, and less so on the logic and metaphysics like their Greek predecessors. The downside of this is that people looking to get into Stoicism will get an incomplete picture of the philosophy when reading the literary works of the Roman Stoics alone. On the other hand, the ethics also happens to be the most appealing aspect of Stoicism to people of the modern age. Luckily for us, plenty of fragments from the early Greek Stoics have also survived, allowing us to still grasp of the whole philosophy. 

Here at Stoic Guidance, we aim to give a more holistic view of the philosophy, as we believe Stoicism can offer us the most when you use it as a complete system. Many aspects of the philosophy interconnect in a coherent view of the world, and offer us modern people a tremendously powerful orientation to life when approached in this way.

Musonius Rufus:
Lectures
Fragments